Super System: A Course In Government Regulation

Why the government forces you to play Texas Hold'em

by Justin Hartfield

On my sixteenth birthday, I snuck into my first card room, Pechanga Casino in Temecula, CA. Before 9/11, Pechanga Casino was just three portable trailers (mockingly referred to as 'teepees" by employees). It was hardly the resort it is today.

Back then, Pechanga had one of the largest poker rooms in Southern California, with over 10 tables of low stakes poker action, usually split between four 7-Stud games, three Omaha and four Hold'em. Nearly everyone in the poker room was born sometime after World War I and sometime before World War II, besides the cocktail waitresses (who could be heard chanting their mantra "Coffee, candy, liquor, cigarettes?" at all hours) and your faithful author.

Of course, they never thought to card me, likely because only someone over the consenting age would willingly subject themselves to the monotony of playing with nine foul smelling, tight wadded, and generally disgruntled seniors.

But today the poker animal is in a much different phylum. Thanks to ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker, coupled with a litany of other late night card shows, poker has exploded into the mainstream. Professional poker players are international celebrities, and their books are consistently among the most popular on Amazon. 

What was once thought of as a dangerous game of luck and dishonesty is now a rigorous mental game of skill and concentration, played by nuns, Ivy League professors and villains of all walks of life. If you pulled up a seat at the Pechanga poker room now, you'd be surrounded by a bunch of tight, aggressive twenty-something poker players well versed in implied odds and usually wearing sunglasses and an iPod. To my chagrin, poker players today are so savvy it makes even low-stakes games difficult to crack consistently.

The game most featured on TV (nearly always in fact) is of the Texas Hold'em variety. For those living in a spider hole, this is the game where players are given two hole cards, five community cards and three rounds of betting.

Texas Hold'em is a great game of skill and widely popular for good reason. It's easy to learn, you don't have to remember any cards (the downfall of 7-Stud) and since there's rarely a split pot situation dealing the game is relatively undemanding. But there is a price for poker's newly found fame. Texas Hold'em has managed to destroy every single other form of poker played in American card rooms.

It seems that Hold'em's popularity has come at the cost of nearly every other single form of poker in America. Omaha, Low-Ball, 5-Card Dutch, 5-Card Draw, Chicago, 7-Stud, Pineapple -- all of these poker variants used to be as common as Hold'em and were spread in card rooms throughout the US. But good luck getting a Pineapple game anywhere besides Lake Tahoe, and good look finding a 7-Stud game in Vegas outside the geriatric Imperial Palace.

These variants are perfectly fun, quite enjoyable games that will be forever relegated to the sidelines as long as Hold'em maintains its stranglehold on the media and market. But is this cause for distress? Like so many other American institutions, poker has transformed from a simple pleasure played in the wee hours of many discerning private homes to a billion dollar industry, complete with its own political lobby.

This is the beauty of Capitalism in action. In a few short years, poker became a legitimate sport in the eyes of the American public, and it was served up by Vegas, Atlantic City and Indian Casinos throughout the country.

The only problem comes when the government starts dictating who, what, why, when and how your casino or card room can come into being. See, there's more than an ample number of people who wish to play the fabled poker games of yesteryear. Yet the government stops any and all new entrants into the market without massive amounts of regulation and political red tape. Say I wanted to create a small poker room specializing in playing the poker variant, Crazy Pineapple. But unless I had a huge endowment and the approval of a statewide referendum, I would be forced to offer it subversively or not at all.

The government shouldn't have a say as to whether a community can have another poker room or not. If the market were the only determining factor as to whether a company survives or goes under, the nation would see a renaissance of innovation simply by the elimination of government regulation. Not just in poker of course, but in telecommunication, radio, biotechnology and other fields that promise exciting breakthroughs in understanding and improving the human condition.

Unnecessary regulation is stunting our growth as a nation, both fiscally, socially and most importantly pokerly.

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written by James, March 25, 2008

I agree with your overall theme of government intervention, I however, disagree that there should be a diversified poker environment in the casinos and poker rooms I attend.

It's hard enough to find a NL Texas Hold 'em table in your local poker hall as is... I don't need 'crazy' variations of the game I know and love - NL Texas Hold 'em.

God knows, I can barely understand Omaha, why would I attempt to play anything ESPN didn't teach me to begin with?

-James
www.thepoliticus.org

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